Midweek Roundup

I know, I know. It’s been a week since I’ve blogged. I’m such a bad blogmistress but I have reasons for my absence. Many, in fact.

Last Saturday, my band of merry climbers returned to Mt. Arrowsmith for more ice climbing. Our previous climbing crag was weeping and thin and so we hiked up a bit farther and found a bounty of newly formed ice a bit higher up. After an hour long slog up a snow gully, we got down to business.

(climbs at the start of the snow gully)
















(our friend, Dave, humping up the gully)















(The start of the climb)















That's me on some sweet, sweet ice. Yippee!!! I led all the climbs that day ! (Applause)

The ice was beautiful and solid. The climbs were rompy and fun. It was a fantastic day that left all of us good and tired. Us lucky buggers got to return to Dave’s place where his wonderful wife had dinner and a tribe of cats ready and waiting for us.

Here’s my most favorite cat in the world, Lakshmi (aka. Meep), keeping me company during a pre-dinner knitting session.

So cute! One of these days she's going to 'accidently' fall into my knitting bag and I'm going to have to bring her home with me.

On Sunday morning, I rolled my aching body out of bed, down the hill and onto the ferry to get to the Vancouver for dinner and the Serena Ryder concert with my dear friend, Abby. I had a few hours to kill before meeting her and ended up wandering about downtown in shellshock at how busy and frantic the city was despite the pissy weather and rumors that whole world was going to be hunkered down in front of a big screen TV watching commercials sandwiched between slices of a football game while stuffing it’s face with buffalo wings and 7-layer dip.

Lo and behold, I ran into my friend Ky, a vegan warrior and knitting fiend, and Aaron, another vegan warrior and knitting novice. We sequestered ourselves in a corner of coffee house and had a mini-knitfest amongst all the hustle and bustle of rainy Vancouver Sunday. I was working on my 3^rd incarnation of the sleeve for my Honeymoon sweater. Ky was working on a lace shawl for his grandma for her 85^th birthday present. Awwww.

Aaron, who’s totally new to knitting game, was working on a scarf for his mom. Double Awwwww. Well, he was knitting when he wasn't talking up the cute girls who kept coming over to ask him what he was knitting ;)

Men who knit are sexy but they do swear a lot. They’re not able to go 2 stitches without cursing. Their patterns must read ‘Knit 2, Curse 1, Purl 2, Curse 1’. LOL!

The Serena Ryder concert was incredible and intimate. I can’t believe that they booked such a small venue like the Media Room for her. Supposedly, it was sold out pretty fast. That said, I’m glad that I got to see her at such an intimate setting. She’s got talent up to her eyeballs and then some. With a voice that channeled the greats of past decades, mixed with exuberance and an eclectic, unique style all her own, she was absolutely captivating. My girl crush for her multiplied a hundred fold that night. It goes to show that you don’t need a zillion dollars of lighting, lasers, fireworks, an opera of costume changes, an army of stylists and a bunker of gimmicks to put on an incredible and memorable show.

I decided to stay in Vancouver for a few days and work out of my folks place. I even got to give my sister her birthday present in person. Happy Birthday T!

I also got to meet up with the whole gang of vegan warriors for a knitting and 100 Mile diet vegan baking lesson. The guys have been going to the monthly Winter Farmer’s Market at the WISE Hall and had a bounty of locally grown ingredients to use, along with stuff they’ve preserved from the summer. Have I mentioned how that boys swear a lot when they knit? They also swear a lot when they bake. I forgot to bring my camera so I don’t have any photos to share. But when I left, pretty much every flat surface in their house was covered with a cooling rack loaded with cookies, cakes and dessert bars and the living room was filled with flour dusted boys knitting up a blue streak.

After a never-ending streak of errands, I hopped onto a ferry back home Tuesday night. I got home just in time to watch ‘House’ and fall asleep in my knitting chair.

Yesterday I celebrated the soggy weather by staying indoors and baking up a storm. I made muffins with locally grown kiwis and hazelnuts. I also made a mountain of bagels. The house was toasty and yummy smelling all day long! Aromatherapy really does work ;)

The muffins were made with the recipe from Muffin Mayhem.
I used 1 cup of local kiwi fruit- peeled and cut, a 1/2 cup of local hazelnuts (from Footes Hazelnut farm). I used 1/3 cup of local wildflower honey and whole milk for my liquids.

I had a Mid-Island Weavers and Spinners Guild meeting last night. We’re getting ready to host our own fiber show next month. It’s so exciting. I’ll post more info as soon as I get it. Aside from setting up the space for the event, each of us are also in charge of bringing a baked goodie to sell. I'm batting about a couple of 100 mile diet goodies ideas to bring.

Once I’m done wrestling with work, I’m dedicating the rest of the today to knitting and spinning. BTW, here’s the 5th and (thankfully) final incarnation of the sleeve for the Honeymoon Sweater:

I tried many different stitch combinations from Old Shale to ripples to a meandering ridge stitch to try to capture the big rolling waves that dominated our crossings in Kyoquot Sound on our honeymoon kayak trip. I had this pattern idea whispering to me from very beginning. For whatever reason, I tried every other idea before I went with this. I really have to sharpen my knitting intuition nerves and just go with my gut from the get go. It’s basically a braided cable on stockinette.

It’s actually the sleeve, shoulder and upper chest piece. It’s one piece extending from wrist to upper collar. My friend, Karin, says that if it doesn’t work for a sleeve, it could work as a boa constrictor cozy :P

A bonus feature of this pattern is that because the cabling constricts about ¼ to 1/3 of the width, once I return back to just stockinette stitch, the sleeve widens enough to fit around my upper arm and shoulder. That means no need to increase stitches at this junction point.

Once I get the other sleeve done, I’ll have a better idea of what the rest of the torso will look like. I have a few ideas fluttering about in my head. Hopefully, I won’t have to go through 5 incarnations to figure it out how to capture the spirit of that breathtaking coastal adventure for the rest of the sweater.

So that’s what I’ve been doing instead of blogging. Of course, if didn’t do all that stuff, I wouldn’t have anything to blog about so I have to do all that stuff. You see how that works? It’s a vicious cycle. Oh woe is me…

Have a great day!

Jen

A drippy week

It’s been a crazy week filled with a drippy faucet, a phlegmy husband and sweaters that never end! Thanks to the plumbing prowess of a good friend, the faucet has been replaced, the husband is slowly drying out thanks to more medication (I guess my ginger tea voodoo wasn’t strong enough), and one never-ending sweater actually found an end!

Of course, with all this silliness happening, I was in a mad swirl of baking. It calms me and anyways, a happy working oven makes the chilly winter days cozy and lovely. All my goodies were made with locally milled organic Red Fife wheat flour from True Grains bakery in Cowichan Bay, organic fair trade cane sugar from Level Ground, local fruits, nuts, milk and eggs.

I started with a rhubarb-blueberry-plum jam oat bars I made with jam I canned over the summer. When you're elbow deep in canning, wondering why you're going through all this trouble in final sweltering days of summer and you're thinking to yourself, "I'm never to going to use all of this up." Middle of January seems like a long way away but it eventually does creep up and man, it's like Christmas when you start digging into these fruity jewels.

I also whipped up a batch of cranberry hazelnut muffins with local cranberries excavated from my freezer and local hazelnuts from Footes farm. It was made with my usual muffin recipe.
















Finally, I whipped up some bagels for DH who is a bagel fanatic. I used the Montreal bagel recipe in Jeffery Alford and Naomi Duguid 's "Homebaking: The artful mix of flour and tradition around the world". They weren't much more work than making regular bread. The bagels were so good that DH did the cutest little happy bagel dance in the middle of the kitchen. Oh, I guess I shouldn't have told you all that ;)
















Now onto other things (warning! Knitting rant ahead!)
Remember this twinkle in my eye:

Well, it’s finally done!

It took 2 months but I did manage to finish it with a few balls of yarn leftover for a small shawl or a couple pairs of mitts or socks. BTW, the next time I pick a pair of 2.75mm needles and say, ‘I think I’m going to knit a sweater with these’, just smack me upside the head. It will cause me less brain damage than all the noggin against the wall action that occurred when I was in the middle of umpteeth day of working the second sleeve. The torso looks long but it shrinks up when I put it on. I’ll have DH take a photo of me in it as soon as he wakes up from his mucous-lined sleep.

As mentioned before, the construction was inspired by this simple design for Knitty.com.

Of course, I took one look at that wonderfully, simple and elegant design and said, ‘Oh, that doesn’t look stressful enough. No, let’s throw in a cabled back panel and I must use absurdly, thin yarn with a very loose ply. Let' s have the sleeves narrow off smoothly and end in a leaf point that sits exactly over the top of my wrist. Yes and I’ll wait until the very end to decide on how I’m going to finish it all off so I can have the masochistic pleasure of frogging and reknitting through the same 3 inches seven times before I decide to finish off with the simplest and most obvious edge for the bottom of the sweater. Yes, that ought to drive me sufficiently batty for a few months.”

That said, I love it. I absolutely, positively love it! It's much warmer than I though it would be. I dubbed it the "Midsummer Night's Dream" sweater. Ironically, summer would probably be the only season I won't be able to wear it because it's so snuggly warm. Oh well, I will wear it during the rest of the year and have a puckish forest wrapped around me.

That’s one never-ending sweater done. I’m now feverishly working to finish up my MIL’s sweater. I even brought it with me on our Winter Adventure trip. Here’s a pic of me working on it. It was taken inside a picnic shelter turned winter cabin at Waterton Lake National Park. It was quite luxurious compared to our usual winter climbing accommodations. It even had a wood fired stove. I was feeling very Little House on the Prairie working my knitting by the light of a gas lantern with the winds howling about outside and a wood fire smoking us out inside.

Here’s how the wonderful winter world looked the next day:

Here's DH and I on my Happy Birthday climb!















That's it for now.

Happy Eating!

Jen

Muffin Mayhem

One of my favorite ways to welcome the day is with freshly baked goods. The only problem is that my brain usually still has morning breath and there are many neurons shooting as a in a drunken sponge. In other words, freshly baked croissants or pain au chocolate are not my usual breakfast fare, unless breakfast is at 2 in the afternoon and involves a trip to Granville Island’s La Baguette et l'Echalote or some other equally exquisite bakery.

Luckily, I like muffins and for the most part, muffins like me back. They can be made from scratch and ready to eat within 30 minutes. They’re simple enough to make that they can be prepared with your sleep-crusted eyes still half-closed. There are endless variations to them and are a great way to utilize the local fruits of the season. They can be made sweet or savory and are a great way of experiment with flavours

If you make a couple of batches, you can pop the extras into a Ziploc freezer bag and into the freezer. A quick whirl through the nukebox is all you need to reheat.

Here’s my basic Fast & Dirty muffin recipe:

Preheat over to 425F. Grease a 12 cup muffin tray.

In one bowl mix and let sit while you put together the rest of the muffin batter:

1 cup liquid – milk, buttermilk, soy milk, yogurt, juice, coffee, tea

1 egg

2 tablespoons oil or melted butter

½ cup rolled grains – oats, spelt, wheat

In a larger bowl mix together:

2 cups flour – I prefer organic red fife whole wheat, spelt, kamut

½ to ¾ cup sweetener – I use Level Ground’s organic cane sugar, maple syrup, honey –

2 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1-2 cups of muffin stuff & seasoning - I’ll come back to this later.

Dump the wet stuff into the dry stuff. Mix with a spatula or wooden spoon. Mix until the flour is just incorporated. Overmixing will lead to a tough muffin. That’s not the same thing is a tough cookie. (I know, I’m such a dork).

The batter will be thick. Spoon about ½ of batter into each muffin cup. There should be enough to fill up 12 muffin cups.

Stick the pan into the middle of the oven. Close the door and turn the heat down to 400F. Bake for 13-15 mins. Test with a toothpick to make sure it’s baked through. Remove from oven, place on rack to cool for a few minutes. Remove from pan and continue cooling on rack or eat.

Now onto the ‘muffin stuff’. This is where you get to experiment with flavours. Fruits and nuts are an obvious option. You can also add in grated zucchinis and carrots or pureed pumpkin, sweet potatoes, yams. Throw in some chocolate chips, dried fruit, coconut, seeds for something extra. For something super-fancy, fill up the muffin tips halfway and add a teaspoon of jam or jelly or fromage frais in the middle and top it off with more muffin batter. Adjust the amount of sweetener according to the sweetness of these additions. So when you add in some really sweet like ripe bananas and chocolate chip or if you’re using a sweet juice like apple juice as your liquid, just add ½ cup of sugar. If you’re using something tart and naturally not so sweet like fresh cranberries or rhubarb, bump up the sugar to ¾ of a cup. I prefer my muffins not so sweet. If they’re not sweet enough just have them with a dollop of jam or a drizzle of honey.

Coffee and strong tea can be used as your main liquid. I would suggest that you also use a thickener like mashed bananas, pumpkin puree or applesauce along with it. Imagine chai tea applesauce muffins. Mmmmmm. Anther way to use coffee in muffins is to add a couple of tablespoons of finely ground coffee right into the batter. Espresso chocolate chip muffins will certainly get me perked up fast!

Or you can go savoury route and throw in some cheese and cooked smoked bacon or pancetta. Roasted pepper and a dollop of pesto is another savory option. I love olive, feta and sundried tomato muffins. Of course, skip the sugar and bump your salt up if needed to 1 teaspoon.

Here are my cranberry-apple-pear muffins before baking. I used milk as my main liquid and a total of 2 cups of fruit. I also added 1 ½ teaspoon of cinnamon, ½ teaspoon of ground ginger, ¼ teaspoon of freshly ground nutmeg. I also popped in a few tablespoons of flax seeds for texture

I also made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins a few days ago. For that I used milk for my liquid, 1 ½ cups of pureed pumpkins, ½ cup bittersweet chocolate chips. I also added 1 ½ teaspoon of cinnamon and ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg and a few tablespoons of flax seeds.

There are countless combinations from the classics of banana walnut to funky combinations like kiwi fruit, peach and green cardamon or an earl grey tea and pear muffin or smoked salmon, capers and artichoke heart muffin. Basically think of fruit flavours that work well in a smoothie or pie. For savoury combinations, think of combinations that are good stuffed into an omelette or thrown into a pasta dish.

BTW, most of the batter combinations can be made the night before so all you have to do is scoop and bake in the morning!

Have fun!

Jen

Nanaimo 100 Mile Diet Challenge